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William C. Rau

The Illinois Fracking Regulatory Bill (SB1715) has been praised as a “national model.” It is a model all right—for the oil industry. And the exact opposite for citizens. Here’s why.

Article XI of the Illinois State Constitution guarantees a healthful environment and empowers citizens to sue governmental or private parties that sully that right. There’s one crucial caveat; the General Assembly can write regulations to supersede Article XI. This is what the fracking bill does; it helps protect oil and gas companies from lawsuits. In industry parlance, it gives them “regulatory certainty.” Rather than protect citizens, regulatory certainty provides oil and gas companies with rights to “toxic trespass” on private property.

Would you let a neighbor come up to your property line and throw toxic garbage over your fence? You would not, and neither would anyone, anywhere.

Yet, this bill grants oil and gas companies exactly that right. They can pollute our air, poison our water, contaminate our soil, increase our body’s burden of carcinogens and toxic chemicals, and destroy the value of our property. Yet, there are substantially reduced chances for compensatory damages if the Illinois constitutional guarantee to unfettered legal proceedings against environmental polluters is compromised by its General Assembly.

Oil and gas companies will be “following the law” when they trespass toxically. They can trespass physically, too, through the forced pooling clause in the Illinois Oil and Gas Act. When the majority of acreage in a designated hydrocarbon pool falls under an oil or gas lease, non-consenting owners are forced into the pool. Access road and well pads can be placed on their land and non-consenting landowners face arrest if they try to prevent physical trespass on their own land. In the Land of Lincoln, oil and gas companies can extirpate citizens’ life, liberty and property rights in the U.S. Constitution.

As part of this industry-friendly package, the bill gives legal standing to cost-cutting but unsafe and unhealthful practices. Loopholes allow flaring of natural gas, use of frack pits to store toxic drill cuttings and larger pits to store “unexpected” amounts of toxic flowback water. Setbacks between well pads and homes, schools, churches and public water sources are grossly inadequate. Extreme chemicals, such as 2-butoxyethanol and dibromoacetonitrile, are allowed as frack fluids, and oil or gas brine will not be tested for radioactivity, toxicity or salt content.

The bill contains no worker safety provisions even though the fatality rate among oil and gas field workers is seven times higher than all industries. Workers receive zero protection under this AFL-CIO sponsored legislation.

The bill also sets a new standard for corporate giveaways. There is a “tax holiday” on the first two years of oil and gas production. Fracked wells deplete rapidly with at least half of the oil and gas produced in 24 months. As a result, the Illinois tax rate will be about half North Dakota’s even though Illinois oil will be far more profitable: much lighter (premium to WTI benchmark), closer to the surface (reduced drilling costs) and much closer to refineries and big markets, along with existing pipelines (significantly reduced transportation costs). Masters of fiscal irresponsibility, Springfield politicians intend to solve the state’s revenue problems with a multibillion dollar corporate welfare scheme.

Another example: well plugging and cleanup bonds are so low that companies will forfeit bonds with taxpayers footing the cleanup costs. The first out-of-state company publicizing its fracking Illinois plans will drill 156 wells. Since bonds are capped at $500,000 per company, and since plugging and cleanup costs for 156 wells will run about $4 million, guess what? The $500,000 will be left as a tightwad’s tip on the way out of town. Taxpayers will foot the $4 million tab. Multiply this case by the number of wells drilled in Illinois and we have another multibillion dollar giveaway.

Finally, even if we had faintly decent regulations—rather than a loophole-ridden, oil company giveaway—regulatory agencies in Illinois have been disemboweled. Budget and staff reductions have cut so deep that the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Natural Resources resemble two Humpty Dumpties who have been thrown off a regulatory wall. It will be very difficult to put these agencies back together again—and definitely not in time to assemble enough trained and experienced staff to enforce regulations.

In sum, we get industry-friendly “regulations” that will not even be enforced and a pseudo-revenue bill that rewards wealthy oil companies and penalizes taxpayers while citizens lose a constitutional liberty.

Comments

Braavo

Question 1: Fracking is totally legal in Illinois right now. Apparently you need a permit and $100 but it is legal. Does blocking this bill prevent the above scenarios from happening if the industry continues to be unregulated?

Question 2: If this reg bill is blocked, but the moratorium also fails, what is the next step? Will regulatory uncertainty hold up fracking until a new moratorium bill can be created next session, or the session after that, etc.?

Thank you for answers in advance.

Leah

Blocking the regulatory bill does not prevent the above scenarios, but a moratorium would.

Most environmental advocacy groups are not interested in blocking SB 1715. What they are after is this: bringing HB 3086 out of committee to a vote. This will stop all fracking for now, allow our environmental and health agencies more time to research and determine the best course of action. Maybe there is a safe way to do it. Maybe not. The fact is that, right now, it is not safe; and we need more time. Thus, HB 3086.

Wanda Ballentne

Every problem with which we are faced can be traced back to some powerful corporation doing whatever it pleases in the name of profit – destroying the environment, using up public resources, polluting our air, water, food, soil, destroying communities, undermining the political process, etc., etc….

The only way to halt corporate power is to regain control of our sovereign right to take control. The Move to Amend organization has been working on Citizens United, but from the top down. But the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF.org) work from the bottom up by going to communities and educating people as to how to exercise their inherent right of self-governance, and to dismantle corporate so-called Constitutional “rights” with some very careful legislation. So far 150 communities have passed the legislation, and now one county, Mora in New Mexico has banned fracking. The legislation is set up so that any corporation that wants to sue must sue on the people’s terms – not the regulatory laws by which corporations will win.

Corporations, of course, have taken over the law to grant them all sorts of personhood (which they aren’t), as in Bill of Rights, and other constitutional “rights” (beyond personhood).

Progressive activists seem to have been colonized into facing corporations by begging them to be a little nicer, by protesting, civil disobedience, writing authorities at all levels. The fact is the corporations have taken over the laws that are supposed to protect us from harm. Corporations, and their revolving door, just switch from belonging to a corporation to being on an agency like the FDA, FCC, EPA, etc. There they write the laws they can tolerate, and then go out and fight them anyway.

Check out CELDF.org, and here is a friend of mine describing how he helps with this. Paul Cienfuegos does workshops everywhere, for cheap, just trying to get the word out. He also sells books, can support that way. Here is his video explaining what he does.

The bill contains no worker safety provisions even though the fatality rate among oil and gas field workers is seven times higher than all industries. Workers receive zero protection under this AFL-CIO sponsored legislation.